The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy (Montague Siblings #2)(10)
“To study medicine?”
Yes, I think, but also to be a woman alone in the world. My character was forged by independence and self-sufficiency in the face of loneliness, so I assumed the tools for survival were already in my kit, it was just a matter of learning to use them. But not only do I not have the tools, I have no plans and no supplies and seem to be working in a different medium entirely. And, because I’m a woman, I’m forced to do it all with my hands tied behind my back.
Percy shifts his weight and flinches, a shudder running up his arm and twisting his shoulder. I sit up. “Are you all right?”
“I’m sore. I’m always so sore after a fit.”
“Did you fall?”
“No, I was asleep when it happened. In bed. Maybe I wasn’t asleep.” He presses the heel of his hand into his forehead. “I don’t remember. Sorry, I was feeling awake but I’m getting fuzzy again, and I can’t remember the last thing we talked about.”
“You should sleep.”
“Do you mind?”
“Of course not.” I stand up, smoothing out my skirt where it’s gotten rucked up over my knees. “I am more than capable of entertaining myself. Do you need anything?”
“I’m all right.” He burrows down into the blankets, the bed frame letting out an ominous creak. The weight of the day settles through me: exposed to the freezing winds as I rode the imperial of the coach down from Scotland, reeking of the horses relieving themselves and the man next to me asking again and again for my name, where I live, why won’t I smile? I’m weary, and cold, and Percy is a soft place to land.
“Could I . . . ?”
He opens his eyes. I suddenly feel very small and meek, a child begging to crawl into bed with her mother when she’s woken at night by frightful dreams. But I don’t even have to ask. He tosses back the quilt and slides over to make room for me.
I kick my boots across the floor and strip off my coat, but leave my jumper on, then lie down beside him, pulling the quilt over us both. I roll over onto my back and let the silence settle over us like a fine layer of dust before I say, my face to the ceiling and not entirely certain Percy’s still awake, “I’ve missed you. Both of you.”
I can hear the soft smile in his voice when he replies, “I won’t tell Monty.”
3
The appointment at Saint Bart’s is confirmed for a week after I arrive in London—somehow the address in Moorfields didn’t tip them off to the fact that I haven’t any spare coinage to be tossing at their establishment. I have a half-hour slot, just before they recess for lunch, so they’ll all be hungry and irritable and disinclined to rule in my favor.
I sleep as well as a girl can hope to the night before a meeting that could change the course of her life. Which is to say, I do not sleep at all, but rather lie awake for hours, mentally reviewing the process of lancing boils, like they might quiz me on that one very specific thing I just happened to study, and trying not to let my thoughts spin into hypotheticals of where I would live if they did admit me, or how I’d pay the fifty pounds tuition, or what I would do if my tutors did not subscribe to an anatomist philosophy. When I do fall asleep, it’s into dreams of missing my meeting time, or my feet turning to stones as I race toward the assigned room, or the board asking me why I should be allowed to study medicine and I cannot come up with a single coherent reason.
Why are you here, Miss Montague? they ask, and I can’t reply because my throat is clamped shut and my head is empty. Why should you be admitted here when you’re just a girl, when you’re just a child, when this is all just a silly passing fancy?
The third time I wake from this particular dream, I get up. Monty isn’t home yet, and Percy is dead asleep beside me with his head all the way under the blanket, so I risk lighting a candle from the smoldering ashes of the stove. I retrieve my book of Platt’s treaties from my knapsack and rip out the final blank page. Then, with a pencil from Percy’s music stand, I sit cross-legged on the floor at the foot of the bed and begin to make a list.
Reasons I Should Be Allowed to Study Medicine at Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital
First, women comprise half the population of this city and the country and have unique afflictions of their sex that male physicians are incapable of understanding or treating effectively.
Second, the perspective of a woman on the subject of medicine is an untapped resource in a field dedicated to progress.
Third, women have been practicing medicine for hundreds of years and have only been excluded in this country in recent history.
Fourth, I can read and write Latin, French, and some German, in addition to English. I am schooled in mathematics and have read widely on subjects related to medicine. My favorite writer is Dr. Alexander Platt, and if you were to present me now with pen and paper, I could draw you a map of the bronchial tree from memory. Also I recently mended a gentleman’s amputated finger with no prior schooling on the subject, and he is expected to recover entirely.
Fifth, I want nothing else in the world so much as to know things about the workings of the human body and to improve upon our knowledge and study of them.
I frown at the last one. It’s a bit overly sentimental and will do nothing to make a case for the stout heart of a woman. It is also not entirely true—I do not want to know things. I want to understand things. I want to answer every question ever posed me. I want to leave no room for anyone to doubt me. Every time I blink or breathe or twitch or stretch, every time I feel pain or awake or alive, I want to know why. I want to understand everything I can about myself in a world that often makes no sense, even if the only things to be known for certain are on a chemical level. I want there to be right answers, and I want to know them, and myself because I know them.